Getting Off at the Right Station

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Shaykh Muhammad Nazhim Adil al-Haqqani (q.s.) said, “We are trying to give a perfect method to everyone who is seeking real peace because reaching this peace and satisfaction is the destination of everybody.  You may take a train from London up to Edinburgh and on your way, there may be one hundred stations and at each station some people get out because everyone knows his destination.  If you get out before Edinburgh, you will not be satisfied.  This is not your destination.  If you get struck and remain in that station, you are going to suffer forever because you have reached a wrong destination.  Therefore, you must know your destination, and then you must take a ticket to that station, not to a station before it nor after it.  A person must do everything to save himself from arriving at the wrong station.  It is dangerous for a person not to look for his destination.  He must look out for his destination and must use the right method to reach his destination otherwise he will not attain peace. 

In our time, people are using so many wrong methods.  They do not understand, or they do not even know, where is the beginning and what is the end; just like a blind person does not understand where he is or to where he is going.  Therefore, guidance is necessary and the most important thing for a person throughout his life is to find a true guide.  A true guide can be known when our soul is in peace and satisfaction with him.  That is the sign, the real sign: to feel peace and satisfaction with him in our heart.  If we are still in doubt or hesitant, it means that something is wrong with that person and we must look for some other guide.  If our heart is not at peace with his method, we must not follow it.  There are so many ways.  We must try to find another guide until we attain peace in our heart with that person.  Then it should be all right for us.  This is the way to attain peace, to die before dying.  When we find a guide, we must be with him.  We must not carry about a different personality from his but must agree to be one with him, one unit.  We cannot carry about another personality from our guide’s; we must melt our personality into his personality and we must appear as him.  Then, you will be all right. 

Once a person came to a Grand Shaykh, Shaykh ‘Abdullah al-Fa’iz ad-Daghistani (q.s.) and knocked at his door.  Shaykh ‘Abdullah ad-Daghistani (q.s.) asked, ‘Who is there?’ 

‘Ibrahim,’ the man said.  ‘It is I.’ 

‘‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’; always saying ‘I’’, said Shaykh ‘Abdullah ad-Daghistani (q.s.).  Shaykh ‘Abdullah ad-Daghistani (q.s.) answered, ‘My place is only for one, not for two.  Go away.’ 

So, that person went away.  After one year, he tried again.  He came and knocked at the door.  ‘Who is there?’ Shaykh ‘Abdullah ad-Daghistani (q.s.) asked. 

‘You,’ he answered this time. 

‘You may now come in.’ replied Shaykh ‘Abdullah ad-Daghistani (q.s.). 

The first condition for a person who is seeking real peace is that he must give himself, all that he is carrying, to put it into his guide.  His guide can take it and carry it.  When we consider an airplane, it may hold one hundred or two hundred or even three hundred passengers, but when it flies, we see only one jet plane.  We do not see the three hundred persons inside it; we see only that it is a plane flying.  The plane takes all those people into itself, finished.  Therefore, when we take a guide to our destination, we give ourselves up to him.  Our selfhood must be given up.  We must consider ourselves as a drop and when it reaches the Ocean, there is no more drop – finished.  We leave being that drop and we become the Ocean.”